'Homeland' season 3 recap: Carrie hits a new low in 'Uh... Oh... Ah...'

Look, we know it's still early days for the third season of this one-time critical darling, and we're not denying that there were some great things in 'Uh… Oh… Ah…' (that title not being one of them). But too much of this episode felt not only sloppy and misjudged, but like a fundamental betrayal of the show Homeland has always purported to be.

The return of the credit sequence this week, with its paranoid undertones and stylized emphasis on national security, was a painful reminder of the show we thought we were watching. We didn't sign up for The Brody Brunch. We didn't sign up to watch Morgan Saylor audition for a yet-to-be-commissioned CW drama about troubled, mumbling teenagers pawing each other amidst appliances. And we really didn't sign up for one of the show's most textured and compassionate characters being inexplicably rewritten as a closet bigot.

Dana running away from home to knock boots with her latest soulful-eyed emo boy was effective enough drama in its own right – the rain-soaked embrace is one of those unashamedly corny tropes that delivers every single time – but it's just wrong-headed to think it has any business getting this much screen time in this episode of this show. Putting Dana front and center as a solo player is risky no matter what, given that Saylor's strongest moments in the past have been playing off Damian Lewis and at times Morena Baccarin, but the teen romance angle is straight-up moronic.

And what's frustrating is that the prayer mat and bathroom scenes show that these writers can do better. They are capable of writing Dana's reaction to what happened last season in an interesting, surprising way; maybe even a groundbreaking way. But they defaulted to the path of least resistance, and so we get one more teenage girl in the Bella Swan mold whose desire to live at all is contingent on the attentions of a cute boy.

While last week we were complimentary about the decision to have Dana's suicide attempt happen off-screen and some time before the season, it's harder to feel good about that now that her feelings for Leo are being used as a substitute for any actual exploration of the trauma of losing Brody in the way that she did. The bathroom scene between Dana and Jess was powerful and beautifully played, but cheapened by the pat "He makes me want to live!" conclusion.

Imagine a version of this episode in which Dana didn't appear at all until the final scene in the garage, where we see her get out the prayer mat and silently reach out to the father she's verbally disowned, reaching out for connection or understanding or closure. For our money, that's powerful.

But as irritating as the Dana stuff was, it was nothing compared to the kick in the stomach we got from that scene with Saul. That scene. You know the scene we mean.

"You wear that damn thing on your head, it's a big "F**k you' to the people who would have been your co-workers."

After this spectacularly odd dressing-down of new recruit Fara, we're wondering if Saul is indeed the mole as some viewers have been saying since the first season, and this is a none-too-subtle attempt to start painting him as a villain. Because we can't imagine what other reason there could be for this line to exist. Saul has always been written as an empathetic and tolerant man with years of experience working alongside people from other cultures, including extended periods of time working in Beirut. Do the Homeland writers even know what characters they're supposed to be writing any more?

But let's be positive for a second. Carrie remains fascinating even when she's at her most abrasive and reckless, and her journey into the cuckoo's nest this week was genuinely uncomfortable in a good way. Upsetting though it is that Saul would agree to have her committed, she really is ill and she really is a danger to the agency. The part that makes Saul an SOB is the part where he's throwing Carrie to the wolves to cover up his own complicity in everything she did leading up to the bombing last season, including her relationship with Brody.

And of course her paranoia becomes self-perpetuating, because it's not paranoia when they really are out to get you, and suddenly even her father and sister look like enemies. It's really sad and while there's inevitably not much subtlety to what Claire Danes is doing here compared to other episodes, it's a big, brash and entirely convincing portrayal of someone in psychological collapse.

The horrifying climax with Carrie being forcibly tranquilised was undermined only by the drug they chose to name. This is a minor quibble that wouldn't bother most viewers, but Thorazine's one of an older class of antipsychotic drugs that have been mostly phased out now because of their side effects – hence the speech difficulty we saw in the final scene. (The ending of Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects featured one character blackmailing another with a forced prescription of a drug like Thorazine, just for perspective.)

Maybe the writers just really wanted to stay with the One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest feel and so they went with a drug from that period, and the impact was effectively cruel if factually dubious. And it was the hospital scenes, Carrie melting down and Carrie with Quinn and even Carrie with Saul at the end, that felt like the Homeland we love. Here's hoping for more of that in the weeks to come.

Other thoughts:- So, can we finally lay to rest the idea that the show would have been better off if Brody had blown up at the end of season one? This is what a Brody-less Homeland looks like, guys.- The divisive credit sequence has finally had a makeover, which was pretty much essential – the 9/11 and early Brody references felt dated in terms of the show's timeline even last season. The sequence itself remains effective, and its blend of persecutory whispers and fragmented footage feels like a more relevant insight than ever into the landscape of Carrie's mind. - Quinn continues to be an intriguing male lead in Brody's absence, and it was moving to see him show up at the hospital and try to stand up for Carrie because dammit, somebody had to. Between this and his mysterious refusal to carry out the hit on Brody at the cabin, there are definitely hidden (and possibly cuddly) depths to Quinn. Then again, this is Homeland, so he could transform into a raving bigot by next week's episode with zero explanation. - Seriously, now. Where the hell is Mike? For two episodes to pass with this much focus on the Brody family and not so much as a reference to him feels sloppy, given how involved he was when Brody was still in the picture. We know Diego Klattenhoff is on The Blacklist, but how hard would it be to throw in a line about Mike being deployed abroad, or off on a vigilante hunt for Brody or something?- It was a nice touch that the doctor who admitted Carrie was initially doubtful about her profession – her accusing him of being "a CIA shill who's trying to shut [her] up" is probably just the kind of talk he's heard from a hundred psychotic patients before. - Plenty of people have already made the amusing connection that Claire Danes and her real-life husband Hugh Dancy (aka Hannibal's Will Graham) both ended the first seasons of their shows in psychiatric institutions. The parallels are even more glaring now, and Saul having Carrie committed sort of makes him the Hannibal to her Will. We're just putting that out there. - That title. Really. We'd like to say that we can see what they were going for, but we can't see what they were going for. Is it a play on Carrie's garbled "F**k you, Saul"? Is it (shudder) a reference to Dana's night with Leo? Is it a general statement of inarticulacy? Your views, please…